Capgemini recently briefed NelsonHall on changes in its analytics and big data practice. The company has recently rebranded its business information management (BIM) global service line (GSL) as Insights & Data (I&D) and announced the availability in H2 2015 of its analytics platform, ‘Insights-as-a-Service’.

Background

In 2010 Capgemini created BIM as a GSL which, in Capgemini terms, means the service line crossed through different Capgemini units, namely Applications1, Applications2 and Sogeti. One of the main reasons for grouping together internal activities was not only to mutualize resources and personnel but also to accelerate its industrialization journey. As part of this industrialization initiative, BIM set up factories in India (NelsonHall estimates that I&D now has a headcount of 5k in India, up from 1.5k in 2010). As a result, BIM expanded from traditional short-term projects to longer framework agreements.

Service Portfolio Expansion

With the rise of big data in the past few years, BIM expanded its service offering during the 2010-2015 period. The unit initially offered data architecture warehousing and management, blueprinting, data analysis and performance reporting, and electronic file management, retrieval and collaboration portals.

BIM expanded its services offering to MDM (in 2011) and in terms of partnerships, e.g. Fatwire (website analytics), Exalead (management, aggregation and interpretation of high volume) and SAP HANA. The practice also invested selectively in verticalizing its portfolio, an example being its smart analytics services for utilities (with Teradata and SAP) and for the U.S. retail sector (around SAP HANA). Finally, around big data, Capgemini partnered with two main organizations: Cloudera (which provides a distribution of Apache Hadoop) and Pivotal (a SaaS ISV provider of data, application development and analytics software).

Capgemini also acquired BI Consulting in the U.S. (Minneapolis) to fill a gap in its service portfolio (business intelligence and enterprise performance management around Oracle applications). In 2010, BI Consulting brought in revenues of ~$19m and had a headcount of 85.

One of the largest client contracts has been with Unilever, awarded in 2011 for three years, and renewed since then. Unilever was initially a F&A BPO client, which BIM was able to expand to BIM services, e.g. consolidating data warehouses and implementing new data mining and analytical tools.

Why the Change to Analytics & Insights?

Capgemini felt that clients now take for granted that their IT service vendors have capabilities around big data. Expertise in Apache Hadoop was no longer a differentiator. Also, Capgemini clients have gone beyond the proof-of-concept phase: Hadoop-related projects are becoming mainstream.

The company therefore wanted to position around new in-memory offerings, along with other priorities including:

• Consolidating its IP and accelerators, to systematically address automation gaps
• Increasing its sales focus and address businesses, as opposed to IT only
• Further expanding its focus from project services/framework agreements to a platform. This is where Insights-as-a-Service comes into play.

Insights-as-a-Service

The newly renamed Insights & Data (I&D) has created the Insights-as-a-Service platform around broad principles:

• Based on pay per use, rather than traditional T&M and fixed price
• Re-use as much as possible
• Based on a service catalog
• Automate as much as possible.

Insight-as-a-Service is currently being piloted and will be released in H2 2015. I&D wants it to address several key issues: large amounts of data (‘data flood’ and IoT), security and privacy, embedded analytics, provision via a service catalog, and monetizing data.

Insight-as-a-Service aims to provide semi-off-the-shelf services around key themes. For example, compliance analytics for banks (determining the level of adequate liquidity), and fraud management analytics for tax authorities.

Capgemini has yet to finalize the initial features of Insights-as-a-Service and announce its functionality roadmap. Several topics have to be further understood in terms of pricing details and model; for example, will Insights-as-a-Service be a platform with little customization, or have single-tenancy for each client with much more customization allowed? Another key question is whether Insights-as-a-Service will be a technology service only or if Capgemini will bundle it with BPO services over time.

However, the release of Insights-as-a-Service will be a step change for Capgemini, moving from project services and a set of IPs and accelerators, as well as verticalized solutions, into a more consistent approach to service industrialization and reusability. This is a welcome move in a fast-moving area.

This blog was written before the announcement of the planned acquisition of IGATE. NelsonHall will provide an update on the analytics capabilities brought by IGATE separately.